Let's talk about this one, because I got a private, post-game, message this morning from a guy with 50K battles who doesn't understand it. Note: I'm only going to talk about standard battles at the moment. It works slightly different for encounter mode. You need 100 cap points to cap a base. Cap timer You get 1 cap point, each second, for each tank that is in the cap circle, up to a maxium of three tanks. That means when the first guy gets on cap, there are 100 seconds (1 minute, and 40 seconds) to go. If a second guy jumps on cap, that guy is also earning 1 cap point per second, so if the f ..read more

I have 661 tanks in my garage at the moment. The problem with that is it can mean staring at an endless list of tank after tank, and it also means I can be all over the place. One day I was finishing off a bad battle and realizing, yet again, that the tank I was playing didn't really suit my playstyle. So that led me to sitting down and trying to figure out which tanks DID suit my playstyle.  That meant trying to figure out what my playstyle was, and what characteristics of a tank were important to me. We need to also keep in mind that Wargaming makes at least a tentative effort to balan ..read more

Had a World of Tanks battle this morning where I got reminded of this one... If you're in a situation with unbalanced numbers how you position your tank matters a bit more than in a 1 v 1. 2 v 1 If you're in a 2 v 1 you probably want your teammate to help you. In order to do that you need to make it possible for him to help you and there are a couple of things you should do. 1. Get out of the way This morning my teammate in the 60TP was in a close quarters brawl with a 705 and calling for help. The problem is that when he approached the 705 he chose to drive BETWEEN the 705 and me (and the re ..read more

Quick tip - if you've got field mods on a tank so that you have the second set of equipment, but you always want to use the same equipment on that tank...put that same equipment in both sets of slots. That way if you're ever messing around during the countdown you can't accidentally roll into battle with no equipment because you accidentally CTRL+1'd. I may or may not have done that once or twice myself. GLHF ..read more

I've decided that the Tier VI British LT the Crusader is one of the hardest tanks in World of Tanks to get marks of excellence on. Not because the expectation values are particularly high, but because marking a tank is largely about consistency. A big component of what a light tank does is spotting and assisting damage. At tier 6 the teams can vary pretty widely - I've had games where I spot 10 enemies and keep them lit for extended periods, only to end up with 130 total assisting because my team couldn't shoot anything. That can happen at higher tiers too but at low tiers 130 damage might be ..read more

I made a dumb mistake this week and I'm still kicking myself. We had the bonus chapter event where you completed 40 Battle Pass chapters to get a new tank. I worked a few Tier 6 tanks for the Tier 6 bonus, played the daily missions, and got up to about 24 chapters done. I had always expected to buy the last set of chapters - just a question of how many I'd have to buy. I was into the final night and debated buying the chapters then, but figured I'd get up in the morning and try to grind one more day's missions to knock out another chapter or two. Got up at 0515 (more or less as usual) and sig ..read more

 Let's take a moment to talk about Wargaming's new subscription service called "WOT+". For $9.95 a month you get a variety of benefits - some of them good, some of them not that exciting. I wasn't going to do it initially, but then a clanmate encouraged me to give it a try. Let's take a look at a couple of the benefits: The TS-54 If double-barreled heavy tanks are your jam, you might like the TS-54. It's got fairly good accuracy, decent mobility for a heavy, great turret armor, and OK DPM for a Tier 8 premium. Plus it's not a bad crew trainer and it makes credits. Not a big fan of ..read more

In case you missed it, Wargaming has announced that there will be an additional mystery chapter for Battle Pass this season. Exactly when hasn't been specified, other than "around mid-season" and that additional chapter will include a Tier 8 Premium tank as a reward. They did this once before, you may recall, and you had a fairly limited amount of time to finish the chapter - making it basically a marathon. There is a strategy you can use, however, to make it easier to complete in the allotted time. The strategy is essentially what I outlined here: Snapshot: Nervous about finishing Batt ..read more

If you play light tanks more than twice in World of Tanks you'll inevitably find yourself on a team with some impatient bush wanker who is screaming at you in chat to "GO SPOT!" If you're hiding at K0 that might be a reasonable request.  If you're in a bush at F4 it might not be. So what should you do? Here are my thoughts. 1. Reevaluate Take a look at the map and figure out if there someplace you could relocate to for more effectiveness. It's possible there's another bush 30m over there that's worth trying. If it's at least not worse maybe give it a shot. When you're reevaluating you ..read more

Quick first impressions of the new Japanese TDs in World of Tanks. The Ho-Ni III (Tier 5) The line starts with the Ho-Ni III, which comes off the Chi-He and costs about 13,500 XP. It may be called the Ho-Ni (and players are already calling it the "Horny") but it's pretty Ho-Rri-ble, especially when it's not fully upgraded. The view range is terrible, even with BIA, Recon, and Situational Awareness you may struggle to get to 400m. Mobility is meh and you'll want a good camo crew because it seems to get lit constantly. Getting lit all the time is bad because your armor isn't much better than a ..read more